In conclusion, um … iPhone!!!

I finally went in to the doctor on Thursday for the fantastic sprawling injury of 4 weeks ago, and all I had to say was, “I was running for the bus in THOSE shoes [pointing to her Dansko clogs] and then I did THAT [pointing to the foot anatomy poster with a little cartoon of a basketball player going for a shot and rolling his ankle same as I did].” She said (paraphrased), “ah yes. Don’t do that. Here’s another boot. Come back in three weeks.” The boot should fix the tendons that are still swollen, assuming they are still swollen because I walk about 2 miles a day with all various forms of public transportation I use — with the boot, the ankle is now immobile and the tendons will not wiggle around and stay inflamed. At least that’s the idea. If it doesn’t work, it’s an MRI to see if there are holes in them (!!) and if there are, it may be surgery with 6 weeks off the leg. Which, obviously, would really suck, a lot.

I meant to post about Baltimore. I liked it, which surprised me somewhat. The conference itself was at a hotel in the Inner Harbor, which was very touristy/conferency and had lots of rich people and that same tourist shop that’s in every city, with the mugs and the tshirts and caps and whatnot. The hotel I stayed in was about a mile away, so it was a pleasant walk through some downtown-type areas. On Friday, the last day of the conference, we skipped the closing plenary and went up to a neighborhood with a name (Mount Vernon?) where we went to the Contemporary Museum, and I saw little tiny exhibits from the Edible Estates guy (he just wrote a book that I always fondle at the bookstore but don’t really need) and one of those crazy avant-garde knitters, Lisa Anne Auerbach. The exhibit was about artists who’ve turned their art* into a storefront or some other form of small business, and hers was the only one that’s in Baltimore, so we went to it. It was called The Tract House, and it was totally awesome. You can (and should!) read PDF versions of all the tracts. Print out your favorite ones and scatter them about in public places!

THEN I went to this AWESOME library that I loved. It was the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, a built by a philanthropist who founded the library system, which appears not to be part of any city/county library systems, just its own thing that funds itself (?). Also there was an excellent exhibit of original illustrations from childrens’ books, all depicting specific places. It was a really nicely done exhibit. It looks like Baltimore was the last stop on its tour, unfortunately.

I am always thinking of little things that I would like to post about, but sort of fail when it comes to getting from ideas to documenting things to write, and then again when it comes from documenting to actually writing about them. Any ideas?

*I’m not totally clear on why build-a-veggie-garden-in-your-front-yard man is creating art with that, unless it’s just because it’s subversive, which, yeah.

I have long meant to make the Ribby Cardi — it’s been on my list since I first started knitting; probably even since before I finished my first scarf. Then Megan made it and documented it very well, and I was inspired, though slow, obviously, to get started.

But I am going to Baltimore for the Usability Professionals Association conference, for work, and I needed something to bring. Most recently I have worked on a baby jacket in sock yarn, and a hat for Garth in sock yarn, so I wanted something that was not so fine, and Ribby Cardi was at the top of my Ravelry queue. So yesterday I picked up some Berroco Ultra Alpaca, which is a very soft worsted-weight that’s 50% alpaca and 50% Peruvian Highland wool (whatever that means). In black. I felt sad about choosing black because they had lots of gorgeous colors, but I couldn’t decide, and my black sweaters are starting to wear out, and I want this to be an easy project so that I will actually finish it, actually wear it, and actually have the morale to knit another sweater, ever.

Currently I am swatching and preparing to toss it in with the load of laundry I’m doing in preparation for packing. Taking a red-eye to Baltimore tomorrow night. Whee.

My sister was here this weekend and we went to see the Old 97s. The Showbox seems to have increased the number of all-ages shows they are putting on, which is fine because it means I can take her. They rocked, as always, and Rhett Miller is, also as always, extremely adorable. He doesn’t seem to have aged since the first time I saw him, which must have been 5-6 years ago. (Apparently I have written at least 3 posts about Rhett Miller and his hips. I also like the thing where he swings his arm around in a circle, most notably on “Barrier Reef.”) Anyway it was fun to take my sister, who had not been to a real show before, I don’t think. Good start.

In other news, I fell spectacularly all over the sidewalk on the Ave on Thursday. My walk to the bus consists of 2 blocks where I cannot see if there is a bus at my stop or not, and I am usually cutting it quite close, so I generally jog. This time I was thinking a bit too much about how silly I must have looked while jogging carrying my bags and coat and with my scarf swinging around, I guess, because I rolled my ankle pretty severely and went everywhere. My things stayed in my bags, and my bags stayed on me, but I think my shoulder bag did a full circle around my shoulder (like you always meant to do on the swing when you were small, but chickened out). My ankle is OK and walkable, though dramatic shades of purple; my other knee is skinned in two places, and very painful. This is, of course, awesome considering that I have to travel this way, and also attend a conference where I was planning to wear sandals and skirts. Classy.

So I was deposited at the market, which is always a good deal, even when the market is closed … which it turned out not to be! I was lured in by the buckets of tulips, and found that the tulip vendor was still open, and also found that the pre-assembled bouquets were $4 each, instead of the usual $10. Score two tulip bouquets for Lauren!
The next surprisingly-open place was my favorite veggie stand, Sosio’s, who had local asparagus and spring onions. Plus peaches, which smelled so good I couldn’t resist getting one ripe enough to eat tomorrow. (I have found it to be very valuable to tell the produce chooser when you will be eating your fruits; it helps her to pick good ripenesses, such that you have one good fruit for juicy eating tonight, and one for each of you for lunch tomorrow, and more for later this week … when left to my own devices, I get all the ripest ones and most start to go bad before I can eat them.)

Dinner, then, was grilled balsamic-and-olive-oil soaked spring onions and fresh asparagus, with steak from our pals at Skagit River Ranch. I am so happy about grilling season, but am freaking THRILLED about asparagus season, and the reminder that it is just the beginning of delicious food time.

Man, food is awesome.

(cross-posted to Dropstone Farms blog!)

Updates to this blog, just so stupid shoe angst isn’t at the top of the page anymore.

I work from home on Thursdays, which I probably don’t deserve but for which I negotiated when I was hired (and for which I am very thankful). Today after lunch, I moved the chickens from the coop out to their temporary pen in the middle of the yard. Later, I was chatting over IRC with a co-worker about a project we’re on, which led to the following conversation:

[14:10] lauren: i keep trying to come up with a nice graphical way to display it
[14:10] lauren: so as to avoid duplicating the tasks
[14:10] lauren: it seems that the task:goal relationship is many-to-many
[14:11] lauren: escaped chicken, brb
[14:13] lauren: back now
[14:13] < coworker >: haha!

(I sent it to G. and he said I should blog it, so here it is. Plus I really wanted the shoes to go away. Anyway I kept the green shoes; they are awesome.)

I had been perusing Apartment Therapy: Kitchen, as I tend to do when it comes into my RSS reader, and this recipe for calzones caught my eye. For some reason I felt like a make-your-own-pizza-ish-thing party was very high school, but it also sounded fun — like very little else in high school, really — so I was decided.

We headed in to Seattle on Saturday, to the U-District Farmers’ Market, and picked up some sausage from Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon, who we love, and some mozzarella from a cheese vendor whose name I don’t know, and some fresh arugula from someone else, and some garlic from someone else. And some tulips, because I am so happy for spring. Yay.

(Sunday morning to mid-afternoon was spent working hard in the garden; we are both sore now. I dug up ~3 inches of the floor of the chicken coop, wiped down all surfaces with a 3:1 water/vinegar solution, laid down chicken wire, and re-inserted the old dirt. We’ll cover with straw and pine shavings when the chicks move in. Garth moved several square yards of compost from the delivered pile to the garden area, and spread it around, and also put up a deer fence. So we got to cross two big things off our list.)

Washed up after yardwork, I sautéed up some leeks and some mushrooms from our CSA. Toasted some pine nuts. Blanched some arugula, chopped some basil (early! from the CSA) tossed it in the food processor with pine nuts and some parmesan and garlic. Roasted some small-cut broccoli and some garlic cloves. Made some tomato sauce (from canned, not ours, unfortunately). Made some ricotta, using Meyer lemon juice, which didn’t curdle it like I expected; we theorized it was due to lower acidity in the juice (not sure if that’s true) so added a few glugs of white balsamic vinegar. Still resulted in deliciousness. All of the above worked well in calzoni (?), in various combinations.

The leftovers from the fun mix-and-match dinner became tonight’s frittata
, with leftover broccoli, sausage, ricotta, and pesto. I also used the whey from making the ricotta instead of milk in the egg mixture. Topped with some pesto and pine nuts, and served with some delicious local greens that G. found at the grocery store.

——–

In other news, I am searching for some good summer shoes. I know that I am searching for good summer shoes because I have been staring at, and evaluating, everyone else’s footwear. I see a lot of people on the ferry and the bus every day, and they are people with similar needs to mine, so I consider them a good source of shoe inspiration. Currently I wear red Dansko clogs, which I like because they are comfy, and easy, and I don’t have to think about them — I just put on the shoes as I am going out the door, and they go with whatever. And they are supportive of my poor broken feet, which I have not discussed here yet. But I cannot do the clogs and above-the-knee skirts look — some people can, but I cannot — so I needs something that fills the same niche of comfy, all-purpose, easy, good for broken feet, allows my orthotic inserts, but goes with my skirts: lighter colored, not clunky, little or no heel. I got these green cute sporty things that will go with one skirt that I love dearly, but with which I will not be comfortable wearing red, which is approx 33% of my wardrobe. I can augment the green shoes with some lighter-colored (pink? white? tan? … ?) simple sneakers, like Keds or similar, but will they support my broken feet? And how do I find them? And will they go with my favorite red skirt/shirt/other shirt/other other shirt/sweater/other sweater?

Wow, shoe angst is boring.

Just yesterday, we were telling Garth’s mom what a relief it was that the chickens are old enough to require less work now. We have elevated their foods and waters off the ground a bit, so they don’t scratch so much pine shavings into them. We have given them a bit of dowel to perch on, and we upgraded them from the bottom half of a dog crate, to the two halves of a dog crate zip-tied together (classy).

So it was sort of ironic (Garth says: “less ironic than a pain in the ass”) that he called me frantically from the feed store late this afternoon to tell me that they had four Khaki Campbell ducklings, exactly the breed we have been looking for. They were two females and two males. We wanted three or four females for eggs, and would take a male just to hang out (and breed, maybe, given the hard time we had finding these ducklings). Two males and two females is way different from the ratio we had hoped for, but the prospect of leaving one poor little boy duckling behind in the duckling bucket, all alone, was just not even an option. So Garth brought home four little ducklings, two boys and two girls.

For now they are in the chicks’ old galvanized tub, washed out (thanks Garth!) with vinegar. They are already displaying very different behavior from the chicks; they run and splash in the water, going in circles with one foot in the waterer.

So at this point we are looking at a future average of:
6 chickens = ~28 eggs/week
2 lady ducks = ~10-12 eggs/week

Yay!

More duckling pictures at flickr.

So we did outside chores — we are spreading the 10 cubic yards of compost that was delivered last weekend, and I am going to start preparing the chicken coop, and we need to start putting up the deer fence (but it started raining really hard). And there are inside chores — the chickens’ bucket needed to be expanded, and grow lights needed put up, and there is laundry and dishes as usual. And there is knitting and video games to play.

And I am cooking! We are going to G’s mom’s for dinner — his stepdad’s daughter & her kids are in town from Hawaii — and I am bringing this citrus parmesan farro salad. I was going to make buttermilk biscuits and/or sweet potato biscuits from Mark Bittman, but they have enough bread already. Now I have to find something else do with ~6 large-ish sweet potatoes. Anyone?

This weekend we:

• made some fertilizer
• built a trellis
• planted peas on said trellis
• bought lots of things at the farm store
• made bread (me) — very successful, thanks to Mark Bittman and the rediscovery of my spray bottle, which makes a good crust
• made butter (Garth)
• made 102 newspaper pots with my newspaper pot maker from Path to Freedom’s online store
• filled 102 newspaper pots with dirt
• filled 102 endirtened newspaper pots with seeds, including:
  • tomatoes (8 kinds)
  • leeks
  • artichokes
  • lettuce (several varieties, including arugula, which is not a lettuce)
  • kale (2 kinds)
  • broccoli (3 kinds)
  • brussels sprouts
  • cabbage
  • peppers (2 kinds — pepperoncini and anchos)
  • eggplant
  • watermelon
  • chamomile
  • spearmint
  • sweet basil

If you have any interest in starts of any of these plants, and it’s a reasonable idea for me to get them to you, shoot me an email at firstname dot lastname at gmail, and I’ll put on some starts for you.

There is more to come, of course; corn, beans, peas, chard, carrots, beets are to be started outdoors, and asparagus comes in live plants. We will also be doing succession planting — that is, planting every few to several weeks, as we eat the existing plants — with the crops that can overwinter here, like kale, broccoli, lettuces, brussels sprouts, leeks, the root veggies, maybe cabbage.

I still owe a post about what I read in February (not much), and what I am up to lately in terms of media
consumption. But don’t sit here and wait for it; go make butter! It is easy and awesome and delicious!

(Song: “Sons and Daughters,” The Decemberists. I love this song.)